Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Hit-and-Run World War II?

Gassing
populations inevitably invites comparisons with Hitler and Jews in the 1930s.
Headlines abound: John Kerry tells Democrats they face a “Munich moment” over
Syria, referring to the 1938 British appeasement that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
promised would bring “peace in our time.”

In
Britain, the Daily Mail features
photographs of Kerry’s 2009 “cozy dinner” in Damascus with “Syria’s ‘Hitler’” before
Assad’s regime was beset by revolution.

Can
Americans today give Holocaust metaphors a rest in debating whether or not the
US should attack Syria? As vile as Assad’s reported use of poison gas against
rebels may be, it’s degrading to elevate that with the systematic murder of six
million Jews in death camps.

Even
if comparison is irresistible, how does a hit-and-run air strike compare with
years and casualties it took to overthrow the Nazis? As someone who took part
in that effort, I am offended not only for fellow Jews who were the victims but
other American veterans who bled and died to stop it.

The Congressional debate deserves better than overheated rhetoric. As a New York Times editorial suggests, “Obama and his top aides will
have to explain in greater detail why they are so confident that the kind of
military strikes that administration officials have described would deter
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria from gassing his people again (American
officials say more than 1,400 were killed on Aug. 21) rather than provoke him
to unleash even greater atrocities.

“They
will also have to explain how they can keep the United States from becoming
mired in the Syrian civil war--something Mr. Obama, for sound reasons, has long
resisted--and how military action will advance the cause of a political
settlement: the only rational solution to the war.”

For
the moment, voters can be grateful that John McCain did not win in 2008. If he
were in the White House now, our armed forces would be attacking Syria with “very
serious” and not “cosmetic” strikes.

How
many World War IIs would McCain and his followers have started in the Middle
East over the past five years?